Antar Zouabri

Antar Zouabri (1970-9 February 2002) was the emir of the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria from 1996 to 2002 during the Algerian Civil War.

Biography
Antar Zouabri was born in 1970, and he was elected emir of the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) in 1996 after the death of Djamel Zitouni. Zouabri was careful to deny that Algerian society as a whole was non-Islamic, and he was an orthodox Salafist. Zouabri was responsible for several massacres, however, and he declared all Algerians who did not support the GIA kuffars. From 1996 to 1998, massacres continued unabated, but the GIA would split in 1998 as the government gave amnesty to former GIA fighters. Zouabri was killed in a gun battle with security forces in 2002.